Toru Nanamine
Toru Nanamine (Nanamine Toru) is the author of "Classroom of Truth" and arguably Bakuman's first main antagonist. Personality Nanamine is initially introduced as a cheerful, overly talkative person. However, his bubbly personality is revealed to be just a facade. He is actually a calculative and extremely manipulative individual as shown in Chapter 118, primarily using several other people gathered online to help him edit his manga instead of his editor Kosugi. Nanamine additionally lies to his online chat friends about his manga's rankings in order to boost their morale. However, Nanamine's manipulation and confidence of such makes him overconfident of his abilities (and those of his online editors). Such is seen when both Yoshida and Niizuma Eiji, analytical manga editor and mangaka respectively, read his manga independently, and both state that the manga does not reveal his personality and that he's effectively superimposing mainstream lines onto his manga to make it popular. Plot Outline Nanamine has been a huge fan of Ashirogi since junior high. He consistently sent fan letters to his favorite mangaka throughout the course of their work since "Detective Trap ." He emulates Ashirogi in his story by using similar themes and motifs as the ones used in their earlier work. He submits a story called "Classroom of Truth" for the Treasure award when Ashirogi is judging. The story is dark and cynical in a similar fashion to Ryu Shizuka's "True Human", and is interesting enough for some pages to be shown full-scale in the Bakuman manga. Due to its incredible deviation from mainstream manga, however, and despite its clear-cut superiority over the other manga submitted for the award, it does not win. Though he is only eighteen, his manga is possibly better than both Shizuka's and Ashirogi's, and he is hailed as a genius by JUMP's editorial department and requested for a lighter version of the Classroom of Truth. Right after his first meeting with his editor, he uploads the "Classroom of Truth" online, causing the editorial department a frenzy that bombards them with protests of the means they use to edit their stories. He eventually deletes the blog at Kosugi's request, but his manga still remains online by people who've made copies of it. Upon visiting Ashirogi, Nanamine reveals his true colors to the pair, causing both of them to react with disapproval. Disappointed by the disagreement of the authors he idolized, Nanamine challenges them to see who will be the more popular mangaka using their respective methods. His one-shot "The Thing That Comes with Being Nervous", a romance, is made drastically more real as opposed to his editor's requests for him to tone it down and make it slightly more comical. It takes the top spot in the issue it is presented in. Nanamine then works to get a serialized version of an alternative version of "Classroom of Truth" to the magazine, called "What is Required for a Good School Life". Meeting with his editor Kosugi, Nanamine lets slip that he has been consulting fifty others from online to improve his manga, with editors and former editors among them. He effectively ransoms Kosugi with Jump's declining popularity and Kosugi's decreased reputation should Kosugi refuse to agree and become "number fifty-one" and hears Kosugi's agreement. When Kosugi mentions that Nanamine's backgrounds are relatively low quality to Ashirogi Muto, Nanamine reveals that he has hired Nakai as his Chief Assistant. Nanamine frequently lends pizza money to the obese man and reveals to Nakai that he was working with others to come up with ideas for manga. Most notable, however, is that Nanamine expressed fury that he was second to Aoki Ko's What God Gave Me, and stated that his manga was too high a caliber for the readers to understand, refusing to listen to Kosugi's opinion in the matter. While Nakai's art does sustain What is Required's second place in the second chapter, the resulting chapters drop their place dramatically, and over half of Nanamine's friends leave the chatroom when Nanamine proves stubborn and starts to cut out some of their ideas. Nanamine's drop to fifteenth even causes him to call Takagi in hopes that they would write the same story and compete with only artwork. Takagi rejects the deal outright, and Nanamine is forced into frustration early on in his manga career. Trivia *Nanamine's introduction in Bakuman differs markedly from that of other antagonists or antagonistic characters in the story. While both Niizuma Eiji, who is introduced as wanting to end one manga he hated, and Fukuda, who is introduced insulting Nakai, are antagonistic at first glance, they turn out to be friendly not long after their introductions. Nanamine is the antithesis: he is friendly at first glance and turns out to be bitterly antagonistic not long after his introduction. *Among the first of Nanamine's buddies to leave are "pai", "LL", "e231", and "osaru". "LL" seems to refer to L, the strongest detective in Death Note, and "osaru" seems to refer to the giant monkey form in the Dragon Ball series. Both are highly respected manga in the real world. Category:Mangaka Category:Male Characters Category:Bakuman Characters